Favourite Tipple For Cosmopolitans – Cheers!

A classic with an ABC twist

WELL, I have to say straight off that this wonderful issue of abcMallorca has already remedied one enormous and inexplicable gap in my extremely expensive education: I’ve learned how to make a Cosmo – the cocktail, that is. Many of you will already have come across them in the TV series, Sex and The City, where I’m reliably informed they were a favourite of Carrie Bradshaw’s, the character played by Sarah Jessica Parker – who had a worrying tendency to horse into them when out on the town with her girlfriends.

I say “reliably informed” because I must be one of the very few people – especially women – on the planet who’ve never actually seen Sex and The City. As I’ve mentioned before, I like to spend my evenings quietly, reading and listening to Wagner. Soon I’ll be 35, so time is of the essence …

I seem to remember I gave my television to the gardener back in 2002 so that his entire family could gather round to watch Operacion Triunfo (Operation Victory), the Spanish equivalent of Pop Idol – which at one point had more than 15 million people glued to their screens, a record in Spanish broadcasting history. The magnetic appeal of that programme to such huge numbers of otherwise apparently sane people had such a traumatic effect on me that I vowed never again to press the televisual “on” button. How could I? Still, information is everywhere, so I have also been able to establish that in the movie version of Sex and The City – the first movie – Carrie stops drinking Cosmos. Asked by her friend, Miranda, why she no longer knocks them back, she replies: “Because everyone else has started.” I see.

One way or another, it is alcohol, so I decided to do a little research. A Cosmo, according to the International Bartenders’ Association, is made with vodka, triple sec, cranberry juice, and either freshly- squeezed or sweetened lime juice. So far so good.

Is it shaken or stirred, I hear all you Daniel Craig fans ask – going weak at the knees at the very thought? The answer is shaken, of course.
It must be served in a martini glass, which is why it’s often mistaken for a type of martini. Mix two parts vodka to one part triple sec (no advertising, but I favour Cointreau for the latter). Combine with one part cranberry and the juice of half a lime. It’s crucial to realize that the cranberry is mainly to add colour, and shouldn’t excessively dilute the mixture. On top there’s an obligatory lime wedge to garnish.

And it’s always served straight up – without ice. And wait, not many people know this but a Blue Cosmopolitan can be made by using white instead of red cranberry juice – and blue curaçao instead of the triple sec.

Do, by all means, try this at home. If it works for you, the end result for the non-blue version should have a frothy bright pink colour – which is why it’s been hugely popular since the 1980s with the flamboyant population of Provincetown, Massachusetts, also known as P-Town, one of the most popular and trendy gay resorts in the United States.

I have to admit it’s a tasty little tipple. But in my darker moments I also worry that some day we’ll all find ourselves sitting here downing Cosmopolitans by the bucket-load – not because we like them particularly, but because we’ve seen them on TV, in the movies, on Youtube, have become fans of the Cosmo Facebook page, and have finally downloaded the app onto our iphones.

If I nip down to my gardener’s home this evening, will I find the entire delightful family sitting around on the terrace drinking Cosmopolitans – in the same way as they watch Pop Idol, follow the same celebrities who are followed in New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong, and have their hair done in the style of Lady Gaga and Ronaldo.

All the world’s a quite-small stage – inhabited by the same few dozen cosmopolitans, famous for being famous. Anything wrong with that? Not much I suppose, except that any day now the rest of the globe will probably begin to look like a democratic pop video version of North Korea.

To prevent that happening, I am now about to invent the antidote – a new cocktail called … let me see … the ABC, which is to be drunk regularly from a silver phial to enable magazine readers to maintain their individuality!

To maintain the lifestyle to which abcMallorca readers are accustomed, I would say that the first and main ingredient must be champagne – though I won’t steer you towards the Cristal on the basis that there are going to be quite a few other ingredients in there as well. With the champagne in place, I think I’ll take a little- known number called the American Rose as my guide. As well as champagne, it contains brandy, grenadine, peach and Pernod, a pretty potent mixture even by my standards … But to give our little blend a uniquely Mallorcan flavour, I think we’ll replace the peach with that fabulous local flavour and scent, Angel d’Or orange liqueur, distilled by Finca Can Posteta over in the wonderful orange- growing corner of Soller.

And then a little garnish of, let’s see … pomegranate seeds … yes, pomegranate seeds on top. Voilà, the ABC! I’ll put the recipe on my Facebook page. I did a little bit of market research with my girlfriends, The Keynesians, at our regular lunch at Fosh Food last week and the ABC went down a storm. The feeling was that cosmopolitanism and the Cosmo lifestyle are all very well as long as they don’t become too predictable and set in their ways. We all need a healthy dose of individuality … and another ABC … or three! Cheers!

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